Many different meanings have been given to the word poetry. It
would weary my readers if I were to discuss which of these definitions
ought to be selected; I prefer telling them at once that which I have chosen.
In my opinion, Poetry is the search after, and the delineation of, the
Ideal.

The Poet is he who, by suppressing a part of what exists, by adding
some imaginary touches to the picture, and by combining certain real circumstances
that do not in fact happen together, completes and extends the work of
nature. Thus the object of poetry is not to represent what is true, but
to adorn it and to present to the mind some loftier image. Verse, regarded
as the ideal beauty of language, may be eminently poetical; but verse does
not of itself constitute poetry. I now proceed to inquire whether among
the actions, the sentiments, and the opinions of democratic nations there
are any which lead to a conception of the ideal, and which may for this
reason be considered as natural sources of poetry.

It must, in the first place, be acknowledged that the taste for ideal
beauty, and the pleasure derived from the expression of it, are never so
intense or so diffused among a democratic as among an aristocratic people.
In aristocratic nations it sometimes happens that the body acts as it were
spontaneously, while the higher faculties are bound and burdened by repose.
Among these nations the people will often display poetic tastes, and their
fancy sometimes ranges beyond and above what surrounds them.

But in democracies the love of physical gratification, the notion of
bettering one's condition, the excitement of competition, the charm of
anticipated success, are so many spurs to urge men onward in the active
professions they have embraced, without allowing them to deviate for an
instant from the track. The main stress of the faculties is to this point.
The imagination is not extinct, but its chief function is to devise what
may be useful and to represent what is real. The principle of equality
not only diverts men from the description of ideal beauty; it also diminishes
the number of objects to be described.

Aristocracy, by maintaining society in a fixed position, is favorable
to the solidity and duration of positive religions as well as to the stability
of political institutions. Not only does it keep the human mind within
a certain sphere of belief, but it predisposes the mind to adopt one faith
rather than another. An aristocratic people will always be prone to place
intermediate powers between God and man. In this respect it may be said
that the aristocratic element is favorable to poetry. When the universe
is peopled with supernatural beings, not palpable to sense, but discovered
by the mind, the imagination ranges freely; and poets, finding a thousand
subjects to delineate, also find a countless audience to take an interest
in their productions.

In democratic ages it sometimes happens, on the contrary, that men are
as much afloat in matters of faith as they are in their laws. Skepticism
then draws the imagination of poets back to earth and confines them to
the real and visible world. Even when the principle of equality does not
disturb religious conviction, it tends to simplify it and to divert attention
from secondary agents, to fix it principally on the Supreme Power.

Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the
past and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of
instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is
far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more
obscure as they are more remote, and for this twofold reason they are better
suited to the delineation of the ideal.

After having deprived poetry of the past, the principle of equality
robs it in part of the present. Among aristocratic nations there is a certain
number of privileged personages whose situation is, as it were, without
and above the condition of man; to these, power, wealth, fame, wit, refinement,
and distinction in all things appear peculiarly to belong. The crowd never
sees them very closely or does not watch them in minute details, and little
is needed to make the description of such men poetical. On the other hand,
among the same people you will meet with classes so ignorant, low, and
enslaved that they are no less fit objects for poetry, from the excess
of their rudeness and wretchedness, than the former are from their greatness
and refinement. Besides, as the different classes of which an aristocratic
community is composed are widely separated and imperfectly acquainted with
each other, the imagination may always represent them with some addition
to, or some subtraction from, what they really are.

In democratic communities, where men are all insignificant and very
much alike, each man instantly sees all his fellows when he surveys himself.
The poets of democratic ages, therefore, can never take any man in particular
as the subject of a piece; for an object of slender importance, which is
distinctly seen on all sides, will never lend itself to an ideal conception.

Thus the principle of equality, in proportion as it has established
itself in the world, has dried up most of the old springs of poetry. Let
us now attempt to see what new ones it may disclose.

When skepticism had depopulated heaven, and the progress of equality
had reduced each individual to smaller and better-known proportions, the
poets, not yet aware of what they could substitute for the great themes
that were departing together with the aristocracy, turned their eyes to
inanimate nature. As they lost sight of gods and heroes, they set themselves
to describe streams and mountains. Thence originated, in the last century,
that kind of poetry which has been called, by way of distinction, descriptive.
Some have thought that this embellished delineation of all the physical
and inanimate objects which cover the earth was the kind of poetry peculiar
to democratic ages; but I believe this to be an error, and that it belongs
only to a period of transition.

I am persuaded that in the end democracy diverts the imagination from
all that is external to man and fixes it on man alone. Democratic nations
may amuse themselves for a while with considering the productions of nature,
but they are excited in reality only by a survey of themselves. Here, and
here alone, the true sources of poetry among such nations are to be found;
and it may be believed that the poets who neglect to draw their inspirations
hence will lose all sway over the minds which they would enchant, and will
be left in the end with none but unimpassioned spectators of their transports.

I have shown how the ideas of progress and of the indefinite perfectibility
of the human race belong to democratic ages. Democratic nations care but
little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will
be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond
all measure. Here, then, is the widest range open to the genius of poets,
which allows them to remove their performances to a sufficient distance
from the eye. Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the
future before him.

As all the citizens who compose a democratic community are nearly equal
and alike, the poet cannot dwell upon any one of them; but the nation itself
invites the exercise of his powers. The general similitude of individuals,
which renders any one of them taken separately an improper subject of poetry,
allows poets to include them all in the same imagery and to take a general
survey of the people itself. Democratic nations have a clearer perception
than any others of their own aspect; and an aspect so imposing is admirably
fitted to the delineation of the ideal.

I readily admit that the Americans have no poets; I cannot allow that
they have no poetic ideas. In Europe people talk a great deal of the wilds
of America, but the Americans themselves never think about them; they are
insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature and they may be said not
to perceive the mighty forests that surround them till they fall beneath
the hatchet. Their eyes are fixed upon another sight: the American people
views its own march across these wilds, draining swamps, turning the course
of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature. This magnificent image
of themselves does not meet the gaze of the Americans at intervals only;
it may be said to haunt every one of them in his least as well as in his
most important actions and to be always flitting before his mind.

Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests--in one word, so anti- poetic--as the life of a man in the United
States. But among the thoughts which it suggests, there is always one that
is full of poetry, and this is the hidden nerve which gives vigor to the
whole frame.

In aristocratic ages each people as well as each individual is prone
to stand separate and aloof from all others. In democratic ages the extreme
fluctuations of men and the impatience of their desires keep them perpetually
on the move, so that the inhabitants of different countries intermingle,
see, listen to, and borrow from each other. It is not only the members
of the same community then, who grow more alike; communities themselves
are assimilated to one another, and the whole assemblage presents to the
eye of the spectator one vast democracy, each citizen of which is a nation.
This displays the aspect of mankind for the first time in the broadest
light. All that belongs to the existence of the human race taken as a whole,
to its vicissitudes and its future, becomes an abundant mine of poetry.

The poets who lived in aristocratic ages have been eminently successful
in their delineations of certain incidents in the life of a people or a
man, but none of them ever ventured to include within his performances
the destinies of mankind, a task which poets writing in democratic ages
may attempt.

At that same time at which every man, raising his eyes above his country,
begins at length to discern mankind at large, the Deity is more and more
manifest to the human mind in full and entire majesty. If in democratic
ages faith in positive religion be often shaken and the belief in intermediate
agents, by whatever name they are called, be overcast, on the other hand
men are disposed to conceive a far broader idea of Providence itself, and
its interference in human affairs assumes a new and more imposing appearance
to their eyes. Looking at the human race as one great whole, they easily
conceive that its destinies are regulated by the same design; and in the
actions of every individual they are led to acknowledge a trace of that
universal and eternal plan by which God rules our race. This consideration
may be taken as another prolific source of poetry which is opened in democratic
times.

Democratic poets will always appear trivial and frigid if they seek
to invest gods, demons, or angels with corporeal forms and if they attempt
to draw them down from heaven to dispute the supremacy of earth. But if
they strive to connect the great events they commemorate with the general
providential designs that govern the universe and, without showing the
finger of the Supreme Governor, reveal the thoughts of the Supreme Mind,
their works will be admired and understood, for the imagination of their
contemporaries takes this direction of its own accord.

It may be foreseen in like manner that poets living in democratic times
will prefer the delineation of passions and ideas to that of persons and
achievements. The language, the dress, and the daily actions of men in
democracies are repugnant to conceptions of the ideal. These things are
not poetical in themselves; and if it were otherwise, they would cease
to be so, because they are too familiar to all those to whom the poet would
speak of them. This forces the poet constantly to search below the external
surface which is palpable to the senses, in order to read the inner soul;
and nothing lends itself more to the delineation of the ideal than the
scrutiny of the hidden depths in the immaterial nature of man. I need not
traverse earth and sky to discover a wondrous object woven of contrasts,
of infinite greatness and littleness, of intense gloom and amazing brightness,
capable at once of exciting pity, admiration, terror, contempt. I have
only to look at myself. Man springs out of nothing, crosses time, and disappears
forever in the bosom of God; he is seen but for a moment, wandering on
the verge of the two abysses, and there he is lost.

If man were wholly ignorant of himself, he would have no poetry in him;
for it is impossible to describe what the mind does not conceive. If man
clearly discerned his own nature, his imagination would remain idle and
would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently
disclosed for him to know something of himself, and sufficiently obscure
for all the rest to be plunged in thick darkness, in which he gropes forever,
and forever in vain, to lay hold on some completer notion of his being.

Among a democratic people poetry will not be fed with legends or the
memorials of old traditions. The poet will not attempt to people the universe
with supernatural beings, in whom his readers and his own fancy have ceased
to believe; nor will he coldly personify virtues and vices, which are better
received under their own features. All these resources fail him; but Man
remains, and the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind, man himself
taken aloof from his country and his age and standing in the presence of
Nature and of God, with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperities
and inconceivable wretchedness, will become the chief, if not the sole,
theme of poetry among these nations.

Experience may confirm this assertion if we consider the productions
of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has been turned
to democracy. The authors of our age who have so admirably delineated the
features of Faust, Childe Harold, Rene, and Jocelyn did not seek to record
the actions of an individual, but to enlarge and to throw light on some
of the obscurer recesses of the human heart.

Such are the poems of democracy. The principle of equality does not,
then, destroy all the subjects of poetry: it renders them less numerous,
but more vast.